A Bloom in Winter (10 page)

A swift punch to the arm told Kit his dig had found its mark. “Now, now. No fighting in the gentlemen’s club. They may think we’re not gentlemen,” Kit said as they entered the dark club room.

“They’d be right in your case, you conceited upstart,” Sebastian muttered.

The Turf Club was one of the most exclusive clubs in a city full of exclusive clubs. Both Kit and Sebastian had been inducted because their fathers had been members. The drinks were the best money could buy and the food delicious, though not as fancy as at Brooks’s. Nor was the atmosphere as convivial as that
of White’s, but they were happy at the Turf Club, where most of the male members of the Coterie spent their free time. The female members were, of course, not allowed.

“So what is the story with the enchanting Victoria?” Sebastian asked once they were seated in the dining room. “Is she a contender for the Kittredge family crest, or are you just toying with the girl?”

Kit snorted. “She is not one to toy with, let me tell you. She’s too smart for that. No, actually, I am trying something completely different. I’ve offered true friendship and have received it in return. We’re buddies, chums, pals, and I rather like it.”

Sebastian’s brows rose up his forehead. “Why hasn’t your mother made the classic bride’s ploy yet?”

Kit laughed. Whenever his mother thought he might be paying special attention to a girl, she invited her to the Kittredge family estate. Kit usually ended the relationship soon after. “I actually think she is playing her cards differently this time. Either that or she doesn’t know how much time Vic and I spend together.”

Sebastian laughed. “You’re fooling yourself if you think she doesn’t know, my friend. Not with Colin’s mother sniffing around for her like a trained hunting dog.”

“I think I’m more afraid of Lady Charlotte than I am of my own mother,” Kit told him. “And that’s saying something.”

“Aren’t we all,” Colin said, joining them.

Kit stood and clapped Colin on the shoulder. “How we all managed to have dragon ladies as mothers is what I’d like to know. Not a single dove amongst the lot of them. It’s like Jolly Old England bred an entire generation of harpies.”

“So what are you doing here, old chap? Aren’t you supposed
to be at the university, finishing your studies?” Sebastian asked Colin.

Kit glanced at his watch while the others talked. Victoria expected him to take her to the opera this evening. Of course, he hadn’t expected to run into Sebastian and Colin. If he ate quickly, he would have just enough time to extricate himself from a night of debauchery and pick her up. He took up the thread of conversation just as they started in on the Irish question. “Oh, bloody hell, hasn’t this been talked to death. If words were weaponry, they would all be dead by now and there would be no question.”

“But don’t you think—” Sebastian started.

“No, I don’t,” Kit interrupted. “Or as little as possible. And that is something I’ll drink to.”

“Hear, hear!” Colin said, signaling for another round. “Now, what were you discussing before I showed up?”

“Women,” Kit said.

“Your cousin, to be specific,” Sebastian said.

“Which one? The lovely, tormented Rowena, or the minx?”

Kit laughed. “The minx is far more to my taste.”

“You’d better be careful of that one,” Colin told him.

“I’d never do anything to hurt her,” Kit said, stung.

“No, I meant,
you’d
best be careful. Let me share this and you will get a fair understanding of what I mean.” He leaned in and the others followed suit. “Even my mother handles her with kid gloves.”

Kit leaned back and Sebastian raised his brows. He nodded toward Kit. “You’re welcome to her,” he said.

“I already told you we’re just friends. Neither of us wishes to get married. And she means that,” he added, remembering
how she had once called him on the carpet when he expressed his doubt at her sincerity. As he recalled, she’d actually hit him. Or pinched him, or otherwise threatened violence. Oh, she was serious all right.

“You’d better hope she never changes her mind.” Colin grinned.

Kit raised his glass. “I’ll drink to that.”

“I met the lovely Rowena not too long ago. Your mother had coerced her into doing calls,” Sebastian said. Their meal arrived and they fell silent for a moment as they appreciated the simplicity of stew, steak and kidney pie, and fish and chips.

“Mother’s taken Rowena under her wing. The poor girl can’t seem to get over losing her maid or whoever it was.”

“Prudence wasn’t their maid,” Sebastian flared. “That was a ridiculous ruse Rowena made up to pacify your father.”

Colin shrugged and Sebastian fell silent. “Well, whoever she was, Rowena is as desolate about losing her as she is her father. Lainey’s just happy that Rowena is taking some of the heat off her, now that Mother has a new cause.” He looked at Sebastian. “You had best be careful. If you won’t marry Elaine, I think our mothers would be just as happy if you married Rowena.”

Sebastian shook his head. “Maybe I’ll drop by and take her for a drive. Get her out of the line of fire. If we give them something to talk about, maybe they’ll lay off for a bit.”

Colin looked dubious. “It’s worth a try.”

Kit sat back and checked his watch again. “Well, I’m sorry to cut the evening short, but I have another appointment I must get to.”

“What? You’re leaving your friends and a night of decadence and dissipation? It can only be a woman,” Colin said.

Kit smiled but didn’t share which woman it was. Everyone
else believed Victoria was off visiting friends and it was Kit and Victoria’s intent to keep it that way. There was enough gossip circulating about them without adding fuel to the fire. She had promised that no one would recognize her tonight. Kit couldn’t wait to find out what that meant.

“I can’t believe you’re leaving us for a woman,” Colin said. “She must really have you on a short chain.”

“She doesn’t! I just promised her I would take her somewhere.”

“But surely that doesn’t mean you can’t have at least one more drink?” Colin tempted.

Kit checked his watch yet again. “Well, perhaps one more.” He would have his driver go full speed all the way there. They would only be a few minutes late and surely that wouldn’t make her too angry. And it would do her good to be a little angry, prima donna that she was.

*   *   *

He was far more than just a little late, he realized sometime later as the driver pulled the car up to a building in Camden Town. And too late, he remembered what a terrible day she’d had and just why he had promised to take her to the opera in the first place.

He frowned at the paper in his hand, unable to make out the words. He’d had much too much to drink. His driver pointed at the door.

“I think it’s upstairs, sir.”

“I knew that,” he muttered.

He opened the door and made his way up the narrow staircase. When he reached the top he realized there were doors on either side of the landing. “Oh, bloody hell.” He looked down
the stairway for guidance, but the door had shut behind him and the driver was no longer there.

By the dim gaslight he saw that one was door number one and the other was door number two. He squinted at the paper in his hand but couldn’t see either number on it. How like her to keep him guessing. He smiled. She was a minx. A soft, lovable minx.

Who was going to be very, very angry that he was so late. He frowned at the doors. Well, he had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it right. Of course, he had a fifty-fifty chance of getting it wrong, too.

He didn’t much like being wrong.

So he called her name instead of knocking. “Victoria,” he whispered. “Victoria?”

Nothing.

“Victoria!” he bellowed. Whoops. A bit loud, that.

A door opened to his right, but it wasn’t Victoria; it was a tall, thin woman with furious black eyes. She was wearing a pink wrapper that was much too short for her.

“I’m looking for Victoria,” he told her with as much dignity as he could muster.

“I know that, you big oaf. Everyone on the bloody block knows that,” she snapped. “You’re too late, she’s gone to bed.”

But they were supposed to go to the opera. “She hasn’t!” he said. “We were going somewhere.”

“You
were
going somewhere three hours ago! Now you’re just going back down those stairs and you’re going home!”

Kit leaned up against the doorjamb, suddenly dizzy. “Three hours ago? Are you sure? Oh, that’s bad,” he told the woman. “She’d had a terrible day. I was going to make her happy so she’d forget.”

“Too late for that now,” the woman said, her voice a bit softer. “Now go on home before you’re sick in my hallway.”

“I bet she’s really angry with me, isn’t she?”

The woman snorted. “You have no idea.”

She shut the door, and for a moment Kit thought about kicking it, just to show that he didn’t care whether she was angry with him. It wasn’t as though they were . . . anything. He turned toward the stairs, which suddenly seemed like a climb down Mount Everest. Silly women. Who needed them anyway? They weren’t anything. Just friends. Best friends.

“Silly women,” he repeated out loud. He found that by leaning against one wall and clinging to the railing, he could get down the steps one by one. His driver jumped out as soon as Kit opened the door.

“Now you’re here,” he said as the driver led him to the car.

“Pardon me, sir?”

“Never mind.” Kit looked up at the windows on the top of the building. For a moment he thought he saw someone looking out the window, but it was just his imagination. “I don’t care!” he yelled as he fell into the backseat of his car. “I bloody well don’t care,” he muttered again, but he had a terrible feeling that in the morning, he would care very much.

A
fter a sleepless night, during which she found herself imagining different ways of humiliating Kit in return, Victoria sat at the Dixons’ kitchen table and seethed.

When Victoria had appeared on Katie’s doorstep the previous afternoon, Muriel hadn’t even been expecting a visitor, but after one look at the girl’s swollen, red-rimmed eyes, she gathered her and her trunks up in one fell swoop. She set out fresh crumpets and hot tea and listened to Victoria’s story, clucking in all the appropriate places. When Katie and the other girls arrived, Muriel had told and retold the story, her black eyes snapping, while Victoria sighed dramatically and looked aggrieved. They planned all sorts of delicious revenges until all agreed that Victoria’s stunning success would be the best revenge she could get.

Plotting how to make Victoria a stunning success was much less enticing than revenge, and she found herself alone there. But that was all right. She knew that she and Kit could figure it all out.

Then Kit failed to appear.

Victoria clenched her fists. A month ago, she wouldn’t have believed it could happen. She wouldn’t have believed that he’d have gone out drinking with his friends when he had
promised
to take her to the opera. She hadn’t even asked to go, he had
offered, to help her feel better
. Then not only did he fail to show up at their agreed-upon time, he had appeared hours later, making a horrid scene in the hallway like a common dockworker.

The girls assured her before they left for their jobs that they had all had beaus who had done all that and worse. They didn’t believe her when she told them that Kit wasn’t her beau, he was her best friend, which made it so much worse.

Lottie, the one woman who hadn’t gone to work, poured herself a cup of tea and sat across the table from Victoria, curiosity etching her sharp features.

“You know, moping around all day won’t bring him back. You’re much better off without him. Men are bad news all the way around. They exist solely to propagate the species and keep women in subjugation.”

Victoria studied Lottie. She looked older than the other girls, with a face like an ax. Her hair was pulled back in an unbecoming bun and her mouth was straight and flat and looked as if it didn’t smile very often.

“How come you’re not at work?” Victoria asked.

“I have the day off.” Lottie tilted her head and observed Victoria. “I’m meeting a friend for lunch. She’s the leader of an organization I belong to, the Suffragettes for Female Equality. You’re welcome to join me. Are you a suffragette?”

Victoria nodded. “Oh, yes. My sister and I are members of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.”

Lottie snorted.

“What?” Victoria asked.

“Nothing. It’s a good organization for ladies who don’t want to get their hands dirty.”

She gave what Victoria could only term a challenging look. “Oh, I’m not afraid of getting my hands dirty,” she told Lottie. “You’ll find that I’m afraid of very little.”

“Good, then you’ll come?”

Victoria smiled her assent, even though part of her really wanted to wait for Kit’s apology note. She knew it was only a matter of time. Of course, it would do him some good if the driver reported that Miss Victoria had been out when it was delivered. Yes, it would serve him right. “That sounds wonderful. Where are we going to lunch? Am I properly dressed?”